Yesterday evening, a friend of mine and I attended a poetry reading at a local gallery, featuring a fairly unknown Canadian poet (but born in Brazil), Ricardo Sternberg. He had quite a mix of humor, modesty, tragic, and narrative poems, all of which we enjoyed, and strangely reminiscent, I thought, to William Carlos Williams.
Unfortunately, I could find only two of his poems on the Internet, though I wanted to purchase all three of his books at the reading, if I did not arrive with such low finances.



Paulito's Birds

In dozens of plain cages
each with its mirror and bell
my great uncle raised birds
but the steepled bamboo church
with a nest in its hollow pulpit
he, the fierce atheist,
kept for the mating pair.

At his whim, admonished
not to speak, I followed,
acolyte with burlap bag
from which he doled out
ceremonious, almost sacramental,
feed to the fluttering tribe.

Half his thumb is gone:
a loss he would ascribe
—in a sequence meant to mirror
my own small failings—
first, to sucking his thumb,
next, to teasing the parrot
and later to being careless
around the carpentry tools.

Perhaps it was his demeanour
—dry stick of a man—or the way
the door to the birds was locked
and he alone kept the key;

perhaps it was that stump of a thumb
grudgingly displayed when we sat
at the table and the stubborn
afternoon refused to move,

that brings him back
as wizard, magus, brujo,
who, against ransom not received,
holds locked in this spell
of feathers and birdseed,
the children of his kingdom.

-----

Two Wings

She would drift into the kitchen
trailing fragments of a hymn that spoke of God,
a river, the pair of golden wings
that would be hers on Judgement Day
and were you to look at her then
you might well decide your best bet
for a meal would be to eat out:

she was blind and appeared a little lost
in her tile and linoleum kingdom.
But she vaguely addressed the garlic,
the onion, the tomato and between her hands
rubbed a sprig of rosemary over olive oil.
A fragrance then arose and you decided
you had best sit down. And you did.

Did you fall asleep? Did you dream?
You awoke to the smart snap of sails:
the billowing of a tablecloth.
She returned and a generous bowl
was placed in front of you.
Then she crossed her arms and waited:
her prayer done, your eating was its Amen.